Category: Obituaries

A constant companion since before we began this web site back in January, 2000, Magick passed away on Thursday, June 5. She will be forever missed.

Magick, the Chief Executive Companion at AlternativeApproaches.com, died quietly on Thursday, June 5th, evidently of an illness common to her breed. At the time of her passing, she was about a month shy of her tenth birthday, which means that she was approximately 70 years old in human terms. She became ill late Tuesday evening and died just hours after visiting her veterinarian in Pilot Mountain, NC.

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Magick, at home in her back yard - June, 2001.

"Arthur's ideas have sent silent engines into space to speak in tongues. His fabulous communications satellite ricocheted about in his head long before it leaped over the mountains and flatlands of the Earth," said Ray Bradbury of Clarke in 1992.

British expatriate science fiction author, futurist, and visionary Arthur C. Clarke died on Wednesday in a hospital in his adopted hometown of Colombo, Sri Lanka. He was 90 years old.

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Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction author, meeting with fans, at his home office in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 2005.

Editor's note: We were saddened this week by the death of "the fool on the hill," Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. To be honest, our grief was brought on not so much by the fact that he was a pioneer in the movement to bring Eastern style meditation to the West, but because he was so much a part of our 60s counter-cultural history. We would like to imagine that the Maharishi and George Harrison are somewhere in Nirvanaland, blissfully meditating together.

On Wednesday, February 5, 2008, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi died at the age of 91 (most qualified estimation, as Maharishi never did officially confirm his birth date). Born around January 12, 1917 in Jabalpur, India, Maharishi became a disciple of the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math in the Himalayas in his early twenties. This led him onto his creation and ongoing development of the world famous "Transcendental Meditation" technique and the "Maharishi Vedic Science" (his scientific commentary and translation of the ancient Vedic scriptures).

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Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the front cover of
Time Magazine on October 13, 1975.

Dr. Joseph Henderson, the dean of American Jungian analysts for the past half century, died at the age of 104 on November 17th after a brief illness.

Dr. Joseph Henderson, the dean of American Jungian analysts for the past half century, died at the age of 104 on November 17th after a brief illness. Henderson was the last living link to a generation who sought analysis with CG Jung in Zürich between 1920 and the beginning of World War II in 1939 and who later became analysts themselves.

After battling cancer since 1996, Tammy Faye Messner has died at the age of 65.

Evangelist Tammy Faye Messner has passed away at age 65 from complications from colon cancer. The announcement came during Larry King Live on Saturday evening. Her family states that she passed "peacefully." She is reported to have died at her home in Kansas City, Missouri.

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Tammy Faye Messner in a copyrighted publicity photo with first
husband Jim Bakker.

Almost from the beginning of television through the 1990s, generations of young Americans and Canadians learned about science from "Mr. Wizard."

Don Herbert, known to many by his stage name "Mr. Wizard", died Tuesday night. Mr. Wizard, was famous for introducing science to children for over 50 years on television, died of bone cancer at the age of 89.

Boris Nikolayevitch Yeltsin is dead. His death in Moscow at 76, was announced today.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a most unlikely counter-cultural hero. By the time he was discovered by the flower children around 1969, a group who vocally vowed to "never trust anyone over thirty," he was pushing fifty. But it was the counter-culture who embraced his novels and introduced Vonnegut's perspective to the rest of the world.

Celebrities die in threes. Everybody’s heard that and some people believe it wholeheartedly. Most of us believe it enough that when we hear of the death of a famous person, we start the counter running and wonder who will be numbers two and three. As an alternative type, I would like to believe that this superstition is true, but experience has taught me that sometimes the great die alone or in pairs. When they do fall as a trio, the superstitious side of me pats myself on the back smugly. Often, the congratulation is too soon. Sometimes celebrities die in fours.

And now there are two; only Paul and Ringo remain. There is no longer any question about a Beatles reunion for there is no longer a quorum. There’s only a couple of guys named Paul and Ringo who used to play in the same band that just happened to be the most important group from the rock era. Not that a reunion was even possible, mind you. As George himself once remarked, there could be no reunion as long as John Lennon remained dead.